The Königsbrück POW Camp, A Theatre of War

 

In show business 
it's always good to start
with a clown act
that gets the audience laughing. 

Of course every successful show
needs a handsome man
to play the lead,
the hero of the drama.

And an actress or two is important
to add romance and intrigue to the story. 

Sets, props,
costumes, wigs, makeup,
complete the illusion. 

Once everything on stage is arranged,
the actors have studied their lines,
and all the blocking and cues are rehearsed,
the call goes out to the company.
It's time for the show to begin.

The patrons have taken their seats in the hall 
awaiting an evening of entertainment.

No matter if it's a comic farce,
a musical revue, or a tragic melodrama,
this captivated crowd will welcome any distraction
from a life of perpetual monotony
far removed from a terrible war.

This is a story of theater productions
produced at a prisoner of war camp
in Königsbrück, Germany.

It is 1916
and this was the company's second season
There would be two more
before the curtain finally closed forever.

 
. 

WW1 Serbian Memorial, Königsbrück, Germany 2020 

The location of this World War One prisoner of war camp was a short distance north of Königsbrück, a small town in the German state of Saxony. In a strange twist of irony in our age of the internet, if you search on Google for Königsbrück, the first image offered is a photo of a war memorial found at the site of this camp. It's a dramatic sculpture of a fallen Serbian soldier created to honor his comrades who are buried at the camp's cemetery. It was carved by a Frenchman, Edmond Delphaut (1891 1957), a talented artist and soldier who was also imprisoned there. In August 2021 I told the story of this sculpture in Monument to the Fallen, Königsbrück 1918.  Since then, I acquired this next photo of Delphaut and his assistants putting the finishing touches to the monument before its dedication in September 1918. Delphaut is the man dressed in a white suit on the right.

Several years ago my first interest in the Königsbrück camp was sparked by discovering photos of its orchestra of French and Belgian soldiers. After more research I learned that from 1914 to 1918 this German POW camp produced hundreds of photo postcards recording the activities of thousands of French, Belgian, British, Italian, Russian, and Serbian soldiers imprisoned there.  

Last week I presented a story about a set of photos from the Königsbrück POW camp called Soldiers at Ease, which followed a theme of men seated at tables doing a variety of mundane things. This week we will follow them to the camp theatre which was the center for a variety of entertaining pursuits for the soldiers. 

The Königsbrück camp was number 87 in a 1917 gazetteer of 177 prison camps in Germany and Austria. It was described as:  "A camp of wooden hutments situated on sandy soil amidst pine-woods a short distance from the town. Capacity, 15,000. 12th Army Corps."  It was hastily set up in August 1914, just weeks after the start of the war, at a training base for the Imperial German Army. This was chosen for convenience as the first prisoners, mainly French and Belgian soldiers, were quickly housed in some of the former German army barracks. However within a few months the military command realized it would need much more space for captured Russian troops, so new extension camps, Neuen Lagers, were constructed.  

This postcard was taken outdoors with the camera several meters above the ground, presumably from a guard tower, and it shows several casual groups of men, mostly French by their uniforms, standing along a "street" in the camp. The trees are too tall to have been planted in 1914, so I think this is somewhere in the old camp. The white building in the center looks like a stables. The raised section on the left with a barn-like roof seems large enough for a small stage. Though it is impossible to be certain about its use, it does demonstrate that there were buildings at the camp with space suitable for a stage and theater seating. 

The photo's location is identified on the back with both an official Königsbrück stamp and the writer's message. It is addressed to Monsieur A. Mazot of  St. Denis-de-Cabanne, a commune in the Loire department in central France. The postmark and message date is 16 October 1918, just 4 weeks before the end of the war. But more interesting is the note and date written on the front:

A bientôt  18-11-18
~
See you soon   18 November 1918

My first postcard at the beginning of this story was of Million, Comic Exentric who signed the card with a salutation to a friend and a date: 15 February 1916. The photographer, Carl Schmidt of Königsbrück whose name was on almost all the postcards, was generous enough to write the clown's caption just like it would appear on a typical entertainer's promotional card. The card was never mailed but has the standard imprint of the Königsbrück POW camp.

Million's wild plaid suit and Buster Keaton porkpie hat are the classical costume of a music hall/circus comic. Was he a professional clown before the war? My bet is that he was a hilarious mime who needed no language to be funny. 

My second postcard of the man with the long dark hair, goatee and artiste's bowtie is labeled a Schauspieler ~ actor, from the French prisoner of war camp in Königsbrück. This card went through the Germany military post, presumably from a camp guard, and sent to Kötzschenbroda, a district in Saxony north of Dresden. It has a postmark and written date of 30 November 1916. The closeup portrait is unusual to find in photos of prisoners, and because it lacks the usual prison camp backstanp, it may be a private photo produced by Carl Schmidt for only the camp's guards to use. It does suggest that the German captors got to enjoy the shows too. 

My third image was of two "women" performing in a play. Of course there were no female soldiers held at the prison camp, so these two "actresses" were men cleverly dressed in wigs and fashionable costumes. I believe they are also pictured in this next stage scene. The woman with the white headband is now seated on the right, and her companion may be the woman seated center who gasps in shock at the detective's report. The cast of five, two men and three women are in a residential drawing or dining room, artfully fitted with faux paneling , paintings, and china racks.

Unfortunately the caption was cut off in this photo, but the other photo has the title: "La Roulotte, MMe. Delattre et Braconnier dans la fin tragique ~ Mademoiselle Delattre and poacher in the tragic ending." The title is a match for a French novel of the same name from 1897 but I could find no mention of the name Delattre in it. However La Roulette was a celebrated cabaret in Paris. 

As an aside, I should mention that men playing female roles is a theater tradition as old as Shakespeare. In this era it was quite common to find cross dressing entertainers of both sexes performing on the European and American theater circuits. I've posted several stories on them in this blog.  At times these performers could be suggestive, maybe a bit bawdy, even titillating, but I don't think it is fair or accurate to assign our 21st century assumptions about sexual orientation and gender to unknown people in antique photos. In these photos it was just another kind of show biz illusion.

This card was sent by Alfred Cerene of the 156th infantry regiment to Mademoiselle Fernande Montels of Decazeville, a commune in the Aveyron department of the Occitanie region in southern France. In the corner is No. 52 which I interpret as Alfred's 52nd card to Fernande, presumably his sweetheart. Though this card has no postmark date, I have a number of Alfred Cerene's postcards from Königsbrück which were preserved for a hundred years and then sold through a dealer to collectors like me. 

Alfred's neat penmanship made it easy to read his name and unit which led me to find him in the gigantic database of WW1 prisoners of war that was compiled by the International Commitee of the Red Cross, both during and after the war. There I learned that Alfred Cerene, infantryman of the 156th regiment was captured on 20 August 1914 in a battle in Mörchingen, a commune in the Moselle department in Grand Est in north-eastern France. It is now called Morhange but in 1914 it was in the Lorraine territory captured by German in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. It's no wonder then that Alfred had time to write so many letters and cards. 

This next scene comes from a different play, "Mlle. Josette ma Femme ~ Miss Josette my Wife." Seven characters, four men and three women seriously ponder some point of uncertainty. The maid's offer of a cup of tea does not seem to allay the seated woman's discomfort. The set is another drawing room, but it is a few degrees classier than the other play. 

This card was also sent by Alfred Cerene to Mlle. Fernandes Montels. He numbered it 32, so it is earlier than the other play. Alfred included a brief message: "Received your photo 1000 times thank you, and am very happy. Soon will write more." 

My fourth photo from the top, the one showing soldiers seated close to the stage, was sent by Alfred too and marked as number 27. It's a testimony to the high standards of European postal services of this era that even in wartime a postcard from eastern Germany could make its way to a small town in the south of France. I wonder what the number was for his final postcard to Fernande? Surely it was her that saved all his cards. 

This next scene has no caption but I think we can get the idea even without a translation. A man and a woman are having a discussion, perhaps an argument. He sits relaxed in a chair, maybe smoking, I think, with a haughty expression on his face. She has an gutsy air about her even though she is dressed only in her undergarments. There is a bed between them. Who will prevail? 

This card is marked from Königsbrück but was never posted. I have more examples of scenes from plays of the French theater, but it was not the only theater in the camp. Russian soldiers enjoyed theatrical entertainments just as much as the French.

Alfred marked this next card number 41. This scene is similar to the last one but with a twist in location. A man and woman are seated at a low table. The man, old with a beard, pours the young woman a glass of spirits or wine. She is seated on a narrow bed. The set is not of a room in a Parisian hotel but in a crude Russian log cabin. In one corner is a large brick oven suitable for cold Siberian winters. What did soldiers worry about or lose sleep over? Not the battles or the bombs, but the menace to their unprotected wives and sweethearts back home. It's an old story every trooper feared. And as playwrights well know, anxiety breeds drama. 

This next card is captioned as the prisoner of war camp at Königsbrück, the Russian Theater. Here we see an exterior set somewhere in a birch forest with a lake and mountains in the distance. Two young women confront an old woman who is seated on a park bench. The women look surprised at something the old crone has revealed. I think this play has a fairytale quality as it seems more rustic and  less sophisticated than the French plays. 

As the number of prisoner of war camps increased in 1915, on both sides of this now global conflict, the Red Cross and YMCA stepped in as neutral agencies to monitor the condition of prison camps. Besides checking on the food, housing, and medical services in the camps, these organizations also found ways to look after the captive soldiers' morale by suppling library material, sports equipment, and musical instruments to the prisoners. Some of these instruments came from local German music stores while others were handmade by the captive soldiers.

By the end of 1915 both the French and Russian sections of the POW camp in Königsbrück had their own orchestras.  And what do you get if you put instrumentalists and actors together? A musical revue! In this photo nearly two dozen men fill the tiny stage. The caption identifies it as the Königsbrück Russian Theater and this show has everything needed for a proper musical. There are a bunch of costumed actors and actresses at the back. A chorus of men in military tunics. And in front a string orchestra of two mandolins, violin, guitar, and two triangular Russian balalaikas. A playbill in the center announces the acts in Russian Cyrillic characters. Notice the Corinthian columns on each side of the proscenium.    

Not to be outdone, the French theater put on their own musical revue. Here the cast has eighteen characters on stage, including four wearing clown makeup and two women. In front of the stage an orchestra of at least nine musicians sits in a makeshift "pit" with four violins, flute, clarinet and tambourine. This is a group large enough to bring the roof down. Did the German command allow the singing of "La Marseillaise"? I doubt they could have stopped it on this night.

For over four years, several thousand soldiers were held at the Königsbrück POW camp. Some, like Alfred Cerene, came early and endured a full sentence until finally released in November 1918. Others arrived late, having suffered the horrors of a brutal war of attrition on the Eastern Front, or the terror of relentless bombardments on the Western Front. And hundreds more came from now forgotten battles in Italy, Serbia, and Romania. How the camp commander managed to control so many men speaking different languages is difficult to understand. But how he tolerated, and maybe even promoted, the theater arts is astounding to me. 

Concerts, dramatic plays, or musical revues are not art forms that can be produced by just one or two people. It takes real teamwork by an army of people, if you will, to design sets, fashion costumes, write scripts, and arrange music. Even in the best of times this is hard work. How did ordinary soldiers, sidelined from combat, and now held captive deep inside enemy lines manage to generate  so much entertainment in this prison camp?  Where did they get the material to build scenery and props? How did they write out the scripts or the music? Where did they find the time to do all this? Oh, wait. They are confined to a prison, so there's the answer to that question at least.

I have many more questions and even more photos from the Königsbrück prison camp that I want to introduce in the near future. My next story in this series will be on the musicians of the camp with maybe some more photos from the theaters too. Stay tuned.  It's enough to make you forget that there was a war on.

And as Loegel the Comique 
probably would say,
"Don't worry. Cheer up!
Life is but a joke!"

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where the play is the real thing.